How Big Am I?

Age 15½, height 5′6″, 15″ collar, 35″ chest,
small, medium … just what size am I? The number of different
sizing systems can be very confusing. To quite an extent, different
companies use different systems. Sometimes companies cannot even make up
their own mind, sizing some clothes by one system and some by another, even
among the same or similar kinds of clothes. This disarray sometimes
makes it difficult to find the right size when buying clothes.

The Various Systems

Age

This is used by a lot of clothing companies for children’s
clothing. It appears that they think a child’s size is directly
determined by his or her age. Since people of the same age vary greatly
in dimensions, this system is meaningless.

I have also observed that these systems usually use children who are above
the average size for their age. I may have been slightly below average
size for my age, but these systems exaggerated it quite a bit. When I
was a child I certainly didn’t like being labelled as the size of
somebody two or three years younger by these systems, and I doubt that other
children appreciate it either. That said, it would make sense for such a
scheme to give the child a bit of growing space, but from what I saw it was
clearly too much growing space for me under these systems.

Several years ago, a Littlewoods catalogue featured a commentary on the
meaninglessness of sizing by age. At that time, their children’s
clothes were sized by height (another not very meaningful system – see
below). However, in a more recent catalogue they have regressed to
sizing by age.

Pumpkin Patch has a sizing system that appears to be based on age.
But it circumvents the stupidity by using the word “size”
rather than “age”. Though it still isn’t any more a
universal system, this terminological sensibility would seem to imply that
they acknowledge sizing by age is meaningless. As they, even more so
being a children’s clothing specialist, certainly ought to
understand. Nonetheless, since going to the shop I came across a Pumpkin
Patch catalogue with a ‘size guide’ on some of the pages that went
something like this:

Size

2

3

4

Age

2 years

3 years

4 years

What a useless table! Talk about defeating the
whole point of size
guides!

Height

This is the other common system for children’s clothing. While this system is objective, unlike age, it ignores the
fact that people of the same height vary greatly in build. (For that
matter, how have companies using this system coped with the childhood obesity
epidemic that we hear of these days?) I have seen almost all kinds of
clothes sized in this way, absurdly including underpants. And why is
this system nearly always used only for children’s clothes?

Small/Medium/Large

These are subjective terms, often a cause of ambiguity since different
companies define these terms differently. Typically there would be more
than three sizes; a fairly typical scale seems to be XS, S, M, L, XL,
XXL. An arbitrary number of Xs can be added to either end of the scale,
though such extreme sizes are not very common; even when they are used, one
tends to write e.g. 4XL rather than XXXXL.

Some do go quite a bit beyond XS or XXL and are even somewhat lopsided. Cotton Traders, for example, goes if I remember correctly from S to 5XL. OK, so compared with what some might consider a ‘medium’ size, there might be more demand for very large sizes than very small ones. But since the scale obviously isn’t standardised anyway, if you’re going to use this kind of system then why not call the middle one M? Giving it Large was a short-lived independent specialist of plus-size menswear in Loughborough, claiming 2XL to 8XL as its size range. Its speciality would of course make such size names as ‘small’ inappropriate, but still, why start at 2? But here’s the real stupidity: I took a peek at the Giving it Large website (out of pure curiosity since I’m nowhere near a size anybody would call XL with any number in front of it myself), and it even had an online shopping service, but I couldn’t find a sizing key anywhere.

Ladies’ Dress Sizes

Other than measurements, this is the only system of clothing sizes that
seems to be standardised in the UK. Though the term ‘dress
size’ is used, the scale is used for tops, skirts and trousers as well,
as if such a ‘one size fits all’ (pardon the pun) sizing system
makes sense. But perhaps the main problem is that different countries
have different systems, some using numbers of the same order of magnitude as
each other. This makes the system useless or misleading when buying
clothes internationally, either while travelling abroad or over the
Internet. And why is there a standard system for ladies’ clothes,
while nobody can agree on a standard system to use for men’s and
children’s clothes?

Measurements

These are by far the nearest to a meaningful sizing system. The usual
measurements are chest for tops, and waist and inside leg for trousers.
Men’s shirts are an exception, as they are sized by collar. Even
with this type of system, there are discrepancies. One company’s
28″ may be another company’s 30″. (Indeed, my trousers
size since I finished growing has varied between companies from 28″
× 30″ to 31″ × 28½″.) This appears to
be a consequence of different measurement methods, which could perhaps be
standardised to some extent.

Of course, there is the question of whether to measure the garment itself
or the person whom it is intended to fit. The former, especially, would
depend on how tight or loose a fit it is supposed to be. This may be one
cause of discrepancy, but I’m convinced that it’s far from the
only cause.

“One Size”

Clothes that are available only in one size typically use this label.
Some merely state that there is one size, meaning that you have no idea if it
will fit until you try it on. Others might state the size as a
measurement. However, a lot have S/M/L labels, which are especially
meaningless when there is only one size – small, medium or large
relative to what?

So We Have Fitting Rooms…

When shopping for clothes, most people would try them on before buying
them, in order to check that they are the right size. However, while you
can try on clothes in a shop, you cannot try on clothes in a catalogue or
over the Internet. OK, so some companies will allow you to exchange a
garment if it turns out to be the wrong size, and a few might even allow you
to order more than one size so that you can find out which one fits and then
return the rest. Whatever you do, you should always check the returns
policy before ordering. But it is a lot easier if we can know what size
we are in the first place rather than going through ordering and returning
clothes to find the right size. This is not easy with the disarray of
sizing systems that there is.

Sorting the Men from the Boys

Most shops and catalogues have separate sections for children’s and
adults’ clothing. Along with what sizing system to use, a question
that a clothing company often faces is where to draw the line. Having
separate sections has its purposes – somebody looking for clothes for a
small child would probably rather not rummage through all the adults’
stuff to get there. It also enables shops to save space by having
smaller fixtures on which to hang the children’s stuff. However,
the separation can also be a cause of difficulties. Someone of a
borderline size might try on various clothes in the children’s section
before discovering that everything’s too small and they need to go the
adults’ section, or vice versa. It seems that occasionally there
is even a slight void between children’s sizes and adults’ sizes,
such that nothing from either section is a good fit.

There are also, to an extent, different styles of clothing associated with
children and adults. I don’t know what the limit is of children
(OK, I guess early-mid teenagers mostly) who have reached an adult-like size
but still like to wear children’s styles, but I can see that relatively
small adults would certainly like access to the more mature styles.
I’m not meaning that every clothing company should make children’s
clothes in adults’ sizes and vice versa, but that there should be some
overlap between the two size ranges. This also means that somebody of a
borderline size can walk into either section and have a chance of finding
something that fits.

Agreement?

It is straightforward to clear up most of this confusion. It’s
too bad that many companies just don’t seem interested in doing
it. All that’s needed is a universal sizing system. And we
already have such a system, namely the aforementioned measurements. The
measurements of chest, waist and inside leg are adequate for the sizing of
most items of clothing. If only all clothes in shops would be labelled
most prominently with these measurements, and if only all clothes from all
suppliers are orderable by measurement, then clothes shopping would be easier
for everybody.

However, even when measurements are used, there are sometimes
discrepancies, as I’ve already mentioned. Indeed, I don’t
really know what different methods of measuring the different companies
use. But I suppose a possibility is to stick with measurements of the
person whom the clothes are intended to fit, and for sophisticated testing to
be carried out directly on people or mannequins that are confirmed to be of
the intended size and shape.